Why I Moved to Constant Contact

I explained here the benefits of MailChimp but then I shared here why I was leaving them. Sometimes you outgrow the business resources you first started out with and that babe is an amazing thing. It's hard, though, figuring out who to choose and taking the time to make the changes, but it's oh so worth it.

Like I mentioned in past posts that when I decided to leave MailChimp I signed up for free trials with Constant Contact and GetResponse. I exported my lists from MailChimp and uploaded them to both platforms (took less than 3 min each) and decided to just take the month of my trial to get to know both sites.

Well all that changed when I got a call from Constant Contact (yes a phone call, on my phone!). It was from my "rep". He wanted to know what my goals were for my list and if I had any specific feature I'd be interested in using and basically just got to know me and my business. It was a total non-pressure just-get-to-know-you type conversations. He just wanted to know if we would be a good fit for each other. I explained to him the techie things that I was having trouble with at MailChimp so he scheduled me a free 30 minute consult with a tech team member.

About a week later I had my chat with the tech member and she cleared up any concerns I had. It turns out that with Constant Contact you can have as many lists as you want and people will not count as multiple subscribers as long as they use the same email. I was sold with that feature by itself let alone the extras that Constant Contact had to offer.

FEATURES OF CONSTANT CONTACT

people count as one subscriber if they sign up with the same email

included was a free branded email template*

able to run FB campaigns to grow my list*

able to run twitter campaigns to grow my list*

able to allow subscribers to "click to download" content*

able to schedule out social media posts (FB)*

able to email more than one list at a time

can easily replicate campaigns

can easily design a new campaign (drag and drop)

telephone customer support

* upgrade features

DOWNSIDES OF CONSTANT CONTACT

lowest package is $10 more than the paid version of MailChimp

upgrade for social media campaigns is pretty expensive ($45/month)

similarly to MailChimp you will pay more once you reach 501 subscribers BUT you don't pay per subscriber like MailChimp you pay slightly more for another chunk of subscribers (501-2500)

it's not as "pretty" as MailChimp but works just the same

I was blown away that I was getting telephone customer support with even the entry level plan. I've used their support twice now and had to wait no more than 1 min to be connected with a live person. They are even willing to screenshare with you if it's a tough problem.

The dashboard took a little getting used to but it can do the exact same things MailChimp can do, just more. I'm definitely excited to see how my partnership with Constant Contact grows.

I'll be back to show you exactly how the social media campaigns work and why they're so freaking awesome!